So I was trolling around this weekend learning about backlinks and such, and found this page, which lists what it calls "High Page Rank Daily GoDaddy Auctions" (auctions for expiring DNs with high PRs).

At the top of the list was a PR9: recipesgiveaway.com -- and sure enough I ran it through some PR-checkers, and it does indeed check out as a PR9.

Decided to check out the GoDaddy auction and made a bid for like $25 just for fun (knowing that I'd certainly be outbid)...sure enough it ended up selling for $660.

But what i REALLY want to understand is...WHY is that URL a PR9; i mean, hell: cnn.com is a PR9. It's not all that friendly-sounding a domain name. Furthermore, I ran it through a bunch of backlink-searchers who couldn't come up with more than a few dozen backlinks to it on the internet...

So I'm at a loss: isn't a PR9 the holy grail of PageRank...? My site (which has constantly updating high quality content is languishing as a PR2)...what am I missing here? I just want to understand: how does a not-so-great URL, with few backlinks (that i could find) rank as a PR9?